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Onus Records recalls “tempest in a t-shirt,” The Evolution VI

There was a time when calling someone a punk was not a compliment. And that time was February 7, 1966. Punk rock history was made on that day, for that was when Nicky Mollash walked into a Safeway supermarket on La Cienega Boulevard to purchase some Gleem toothpaste so he could look his best for a photo shoot at Pandora’s Box, a then popular hangout on the Sunset Strip. Mollash picked up a tube that was incorrectly priced at a whopping $5.99. When the gum chewing, non-plussed cashier, evidently a stranger to both retail and fluoride, demanded he pay the denoted price or put it back on the shelf, an irate Mollash completely lost it and started a small scale mini-mart riot, threatening the checkout girl, Procter and Gamble, its shareholders and of course, The Man for once again keeping him downer than he ought to be. The Evolution VI’s volatile lead singer was already smarting from being refused service at Bob Dalton’s Restaurant the night before, mostly because the feathers from his ostrich vest were landing on other patrons’ Porterhouse steaks.
Once the Channel 3 Action News Team reported this story, Mollash blew off the photo shoot, electing instead to dash off to his girlfriend’s house for a pity screw. Following that, he commemorated the day’s harrowing events by penning “Real Revolting”, which the group speedily recorded the next night while Mollash’s bile over the gunk caked on his pearly whites still churned inside of him. As blistering a rant of monetary outrage as this track was, Mollash (who has since mellowed about rock music and dental care) prefers the stereo version that appeared on the Here Comes The Evolution VI album because “Someone forgot to include bass and drum cymbals on the single version.” Still, some punk audio purists maintain the only true version of the song is the first take of the song found on initial German mono pressings of the Hier Kommt Die Evolution VI LP, which breaks into a fistfight during the harmonica solo and dissolves into plate throwing and name-calling thereafter.

The group’s collective moment in the spotlight proved to be profoundly brief, but some members continued to garner notoriety in a post-Evolution VI world. Drummer Bobby Munsey became an injury law specialist whose omnipresent Munsey, Rimbaldo & Associates billboards stare down on the seedy Strip where he and his bandmates marauded nearly half a century ago. When lead guitarist Denny Tollesen perished at sea in a tragic Segway Personal Transporter accident, Munsey wasted no time contacting Tolleson’s widow to tell her that she was entitled to a huge cash settlement that made them both obnoxiously rich.

But what of the angry young Nicky Mollash? In an ironic twist to an already moronic story, when Mollash left the world of rock music to write his 1975 self-help book Still Revolting: Channeling Your Inner Spoiled Brat, he admitted to the world that his rage was little more than “a tempest in a t-shirt.” It turned out that he was actually the son of Walter P. Mollash and stood to inherit the family fortune his Daddy amassed while he was president of Procter and Gamble’s chief rival, Lever Brothers. So much for punk rock.